The Next Big Thing

What is the working title of your book?

Masochistically, I recently started a new novel which I am after, O maybe two weeks or so, about 11k words into despite holidays and travel and job interviews and planning next semester. I feel fairly proud of myself for my ability to ignore more immediate, fulfilling concerns in favor of a years long project about ghosts or whatever it is I write about.

Anyway, it’s currently called The City One Winter which will not be the final title. The final title will also not be Winterset which is also what I sometimes call it. That’s where John Wayne is from and since he’s not in the novel, it feels unfair to promise The Duke if I can’t deliver The Duke. Nor is it set in Winterfell from the Game of Thrones universe which is also what that evokes.

Although now it seems so obvious that I should have written a novel about John Wayne kicking heads in the Game of Thrones universe. I’ve done it all wrong. Writing, titling, life, all.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Let’s see, it’s about sickness and entropy and family and America and failed utopia…I have no idea. I do write about that stuff a lot. It’s possible I just drew a few cards from my mental deck and that’s what came out.

More seriously: I imagined a city on fire and a girl in the arms of an older man who’d forgotten her name. I started there.

What genre does your book fall under?

Self-hurt.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Let’s all hope it never comes to this.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A girl follows the wanderings of a sick man who is trying to remember a love he lost in his youth.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

My book is flattered just to be so often referred to as a book. For something that has a typo in the first sentence, it really is quite the honor to imagine it represented, published, filmed, taken to the prom, reclaimed by the post-mo(on)dernists, etc.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I may have chosen the wrong project for this questionnaire. Let’s say I hope to have a draft done by the end of the summer. Or sooner. Or later. I’m not sure. It’s going to be a short novel–as is my want–so let’s say if I can keep up the current pace I’ll be done by then but, in all likelihood, I’m going to have to start over and overwrite and turn it into a screenplay and turn it back into a novel and will finish sometime around next winter. That’s good. It’s a winter book.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I don’t know if inspiration ever plays into it, but, well, I guess I can say that the books I’ve been looking at while writing it are The Scarlet Letter, The Good Soldier, and Lolita. Not that it has anything to do with any of those amazing books, exactly, but they’ve been language guides. That’s pretty much what inspiration means to me.